Clear Forthright Open & “Shonky”; Mallesons Slams Firm Spy Analysis

In response to last Friday’s post regarding dodgey corporate awards, we received the following comments:

analytical review

So….. What does IFLR say about this? Have Blake Dawson and Mallesons written in to clarify? The Mallesons Wikipedia entry says that Mallesons won the IFLR “Australian Law Firm of the Year” for 2009. That’s the same award that Blake Dawson claims on their website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallesons_Stephen_Jaques I think both firms should duke it out Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome style. “Two firms enter. One firm leaves.”

At least we won’t confuse them with Dorda Brugger Jordis. They won IFLR’s “AUSTRIAN law firm of the year for 2009″. http://www.dbj.co.at/phps/Presse/Pressinfo_engl20090323.pdf

No, there will be no confusion about the Austrian winner, that’s for sure! But in an excellent scoop, it appears that the awards we identified aren’t the only ones that should be queried. We received the following very interesting comments from an anonymous spy on the weekend:

Even more dodgy are Fairfax’s CFO Magazine Awards , which have a whole heap of gongs for law, accounting and bank organisations, among others. As someone who has been close to the process I can tell you that these awards appear to go a long way to keeping the mag afloat and it is an unspoken understanding that those who take out advertising and or ‘sponsorship’ deals with CFO tend to get rewarded more than those who don’t. The judging process is strange to say the least yet huge resources are poured into the award submissions with firms eager to blab about how they met this or that criteria though it is doubtful the busy judges supposedly from the top end of town read these lengthy essays of self promotion in detail. (This is reflected in the scant reasons given for the wins). Nominees for awards are then charged handsomely to take out a table at the actual awards lunch or dinner. The proud CEO gets to be photographed with the award but not to say much if anything (as time is always tight at these awards bazaars). Once the award is in the bag, the firms rush back to issue a press release and put the win on their email footers and in every client pitch for the next 12 months until it’s time to buy (sorry win) the next award.

The Clear Forthright Open Awards?

We then received the following comments from an anonymous Mallesons spy (thanks to the white wizard, or whomever it was in the Mallesons media team that authored this):

Mallesons does not currently pay Beaton Consulting for Client Choice research, so how interesting that we still won the BRW ClientChoice award this year. Shock, horror! Maybe we won the award because clients actually consider our service to be better. The majority of legal awards are voted as a result of polling clients. Since these clients work with most of the major firms, they have no vested interest in choosing one over another, unless they think the service is better. As for IFLR, Blakes won Australian Firm of the Year and Mallesons won Regional Firm of the Year in the latest awards. A quick check of the IFLR website would confirm this. Or doesn’t Firm Spy bother with traditional journalistic principles like basic research? It’s your analysis on this one that is shonky, not the awards.

Well, we actually took the unusual step of doing some basic research on this one (although we’ve never claimed to follow traditional journalistic principles and, in a moment, we’ll get to the reasons why it is a sad case of the pot calling the kettle black for a person in a position of authority at Mallesons to characterise our analysis as “shonky”). We visited the Mallesons Wikipedia page, which claims the firm won the IFLR’ Australian Law Firm of the Year 2009 as well as the Mallesons website, which claims Mallesons won IFLR’s National Law Firm of the Year (Australia) 2009. Blakes apparently claims also to have won the same award – IFLR’s Australian Law Firm of the Year 2009 – ostensibly the same award. No, we didn’t sign up to IFLR, but we think our analysis is reasonable.

The real analysis that needs to be questioned, we think, is the transparent muddy analysis allegedly given recently by Mallesons to its staff:

Firm Spy, a few weeks ago the heads of each Mallesons practice group travelled to each center to deliver a snapshot of how the firm is travelling year-to-date. Although the numbers were confusing, the one message that seemed very clear in the presentation was that the partners have apparently earned 7% less than at this point last financial year. There were also some statistics on how lawyer utilisation numbers are down.

However, the partner who delivered my group’s presentation did a very poor job of clarifying that the figures we were shown included each of the lawyers who took the voluntary redundacy package. So it should come as no surprise that utilisation rates are down, and year-to-date revenue compared with last year. But with overheads lower, I can see no reason how the partnership can justify a less than excellent pay review in July. I wonder if all practice heads delivered their presentations similarly?

Yes, we wonder too! Sounds very shonky to us!

Of course, it is not a partner’s job to adhere to “traditional journalistic principles”, but is it fair to conjure up a range of statistics (if that’s what happened) that might arguably set staff up for downgraded expectations in their annual pay review? Or is it shonky?

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